An overwhelming amount of data has been made available for retrieval over the Internet or over other communication networks. Such data is generally available from a large number of different data sources, including data sources curated by data service providers. Some people seeking to find data using key terms entered into search engines or other processes often cannot efficiently find the data they are looking for. Moreover, once a set of search results is provided, some people may not be able to use the results in a meaningful way. Additionally, some people may not possess the skill or time necessary for developing precise search terms to ensure that results of a search are comprehensive and complete, and also may not possess the skill or time necessary for interpreting large volumes of data returned in response to searches.
The above issues may be particularly true when one is searching for trademarks and/or service marks (e.g., word marks, trademark images/logos) in syntax-driven repositories (e.g., to conduct trademark or service mark clearances), where differences in spelling, context, or presentation of search terms can yield different results that may or may not include pertinent trademarks or service marks that should be reviewed as part of the trademark clearance process. When performing trademark clearances or similar tasks, the person (or people) conducting the clearance is typically interested in receiving search results that are similar to a proposed trademark or service mark, which can include words, sounds, images, and/or colors, and the like, and then determining whether any of the results are “confusingly” similar to proposed mark.
When considering whether any of the results are confusingly similar to the proposed mark, the person conducting the search typically needs to take into account not only the spelling of words, actual images, or colors in the proposed mark, but also, for example, how the words sound when they are spoken, morphological similarity, the meaning/semantics behind the words, possible translations and/or transliterations and/or whether images and/or colors in any of the results are similar enough to the proposed mark (e.g., an image of a horse vs. an image of a donkey). Therefore, when searching for confusingly similar trademarks or service marks, it may be necessary to conduct a broad search. However, this may introduce a large quantity of irrelevant trademarks or services marks in the search results, which can make it difficult and time consuming for someone to review and identify potentially confusingly similar marks.
There remains a need for solutions to effectively and efficiently traverse data repositories to identify, retrieve, and process data that may be of interest to users, while simplifying the input required by the users to initiate such identification, retrieval, and processing.